Spanish Republicans, abandoned by the democracies and relying on aid from the communists, carried on a losing struggle against fascism. From The Second World War: Prelude to Conflict (1963), a documentary by Encyclopædia Britannica Educational Corporation.

Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

Learn about this topic in these articles:

major treatment

17th-century nobility

...alerted landowners to the dangers of serfdom, but it was reckoned that three-fifths of all landowners owned fewer than 20 serfs. The census of 1687 showed that there were half a million nobles in Spain. But
hidalguia might mean little more than a Spaniard’s estimation of himself. Without a substantial
señorio (estate), the hidalgo was insignificant.

age of European monarchy

The Iberian Peninsula provides further illustration of the absolutist theme. Historians do not agree about the nature or precise extent of Spain’s decline, but there is agreement that it did occur, that it was most pronounced at mid-century, and that its causes may be traced not only to the reign of Philip II (1556–98), the overextended champion of Roman Catholic and Spanish hegemony, but...

Canning

...and French resistance to Napoleon on the Iberian Peninsula, was also begun. Holding Viscount Castlereagh, the war secretary, responsible for the disasters that overtook British arms at Corunna in Spain and at Flushing (Vlissingen) in Holland, Canning in 1809 insisted on his dismissal. They quarreled and fought a duel on September 21, in which Canning was wounded in the thigh. Both had already...

Charlemagne

Concerned with defending southern Gaul from Muslim attacks and beguiled by promises of help from local Muslim leaders in northern Spain who sought to escape the authority of the Umayyad ruler of Cordoba, Charlemagne invaded Spain in 778. That ill-considered venture ended in a disastrous defeat of the retreating Frankish army by Gascon (Basque) forces, immortalized three centuries later in the...

He pursued an active policy toward the Mediterranean world. In Spain he attempted to take advantage of the emir of Córdoba’s difficulties; he was unsuccessful in western Spain, but in the east he was able to establish a march, or border territory, south of the Pyrenees to the important city Barcelona. Pursuing Pippin’s Italian policy, he intervened in Italy. At the request of Pope Adrian...

Charles II

...He was destitute and friendless, unable to bring pressure against an increasingly powerful England. France and the Dutch United Provinces were closed to him by Cromwell’s diplomacy and he turned to Spain, with whom he concluded a treaty in April 1656. He persuaded his brother James to relinquish his command in the French army and gave him some regiments of Anglo-Irish troops in Spanish service,...

Charles V

...came of age as duke of Burgundy and assumed rule over the Netherlands. His scope of activities soon widened. On January 23, 1516, Ferdinand II died. As a result, the problem of the succession in Spain became acute, since by the terms of Ferdinand’s will, Charles was to govern in Aragon and Castile together with his mother (who, however, suffered from a nervous illness and never reigned)....

Condé

...again tried to extract too high a price for his goodwill toward the queen regent. When she took up the challenge, he launched an open rebellion in the southwest (September 1651), allied himself with Spain, and made his way to Paris, where he was able for a time to defy the royal army commanded by Turenne. His position, however, soon became both politically and militarily untenable, and he left...

Drake

...and many of them killed. Drake escaped during the attack and returned to England in command of a small vessel, the
Judith, with an even greater determination to have his revenge upon Spain and the Spanish king, Philip II. Although the expedition was a financial failure, it brought Drake to the attention of Queen Elizabeth I, who had herself invested in the slave-trading venture....

Elizabeth I

...Spanish shipping and ports alternated with conciliatory gestures and peace talks. But by the mid-1580s it became increasingly clear that England could not avoid a direct military confrontation with Spain. Word reached London that the Spanish king, Philip II, had begun to assemble an enormous fleet that would sail to the Netherlands, join forces with a waiting Spanish army led by the duke of...

Frederick Henry

As a strategist, Frederick Henry proved himself to be the foremost disciple of his brother, Maurice, and the Dutch wars against the Spanish continued to be considered a kind of military academy for young European noblemen. The Prince’s universally recognized strength lay in capturing fortified “places”; once he was even heard to exclaim: “God deliver us from pitched...

Hannibal

Hannibal’s earliest commands were given to him in the Carthaginian province of Spain by Hasdrubal, son-in-law and successor of Hamilcar. It is clear that Hannibal emerged as a successful officer, for, on the assassination of Hasdrubal in 221, the army proclaimed him, at age 26, its commander in chief, and the Carthaginian government quickly ratified his field appointment.

Henry VII

...marriage of James IV to Henry’s daughter Margaret. James’s consent to the match may have been fostered by the arrival in England of Catherine of Aragon for her marriage with Prince Arthur in 1501. Spain had recently sprung into the first rank of European powers, so a marriage alliance with Spain enhanced the prestige of the Tudor dynasty, and the fact that in 1501 the Spanish monarchs allowed...

Henry VIII

More serious was Henry’s determination to engage in military adventure. Europe was being kept on the boil by rivalries between the French and Spanish kingdoms, mostly over Italian claims; and, against the advice of his older councillors, Henry in 1512 joined his father-in-law, Ferdinand II of Aragon, against France and ostensibly in support of a threatened pope, to whom the devout king for a...

Jackson

In August 1814, Jackson moved his army south to Mobile. Though he was without specific instructions, his real objective was the Spanish post at Pensacola. The motive was to prepare the way for U.S. occupation of Florida, then a Spanish possession. Jackson’s justification for this bold move was that Spain and Great Britain were allies in the wars in Europe. At Mobile, Jackson learned that an...

Jenatsch

...thirst for action led him into politics. The Grisons were loosely attached to the Swiss Confederation and at that time controlled the Valtellina with its roads and passes, a region over which the Spaniards (from their duchy of Milan), the Austrian Habsburgs, France, and Venice all sought paramount influence. Opposing the Spaniards, he narrowly escaped the bloodbath of July 19–23, 1620,...

Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen

...dominant power in Europe. The immediate cause of the Franco-German War, however, was the candidacy of Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen (who was related to the Prussian royal house) for the Spanish throne, which had been left vacant when Queen Isabella II had been deposed in 1868. The Prussian chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, and Spain’s de facto leader, Juan Prim, persuaded the reluctant...

Louis XIV

Three years later, in 1700, Charles II, the last Habsburg king of Spain, died, bequeathing his kingdoms to Louis’s grandson, Philip of Anjou (Philip V). Louis, who desired nothing more than peace, hesitated but finally accepted the inheritance. He has been strongly criticized for his decision, but he had no alternative. With England against him, he had to try to prevent Spain from falling into...

Magellan

Portuguese navigator and explorer who sailed under the flags of both Portugal (1505–13) and Spain (1519–21). From Spain he sailed around South America, discovering the Strait of Magellan, and across the Pacific. Though he was killed in the Philippines, one of his ships continued westward to Spain, accomplishing the first circumnavigation of Earth. The voyage was successfully...

Manuel I

Manuel’s claims to these newly discovered lands were confirmed by the papacy and recognized by the Spanish, with whom Manuel maintained close relations. His three queens were Spanish. The first was Isabella, eldest daughter of cosovereigns Ferdinand and Isabella and widow of John II’s heir. As a condition of the marriage, Manuel was to expel the Jews, many thousands of whom had been admitted by...

Maurice

...with Breda (the Nassau family seat), Maurice captured one enemy stronghold after another. In a series of actions, remarkable less for their audacity than for cool and systematic planning, the Spanish front lines were pushed back to the north, east, and south until the republic’s territory began to assume something very much like its modern shape. Joyfully the Holland towns paid homage to...

Maximilian I

In 1486 he was elected king of the Romans (heir to his father, the emperor) and crowned at Aachen on April 9. With the military help of Spain, England, and Brittany, he continued his war against France. Like his predecessors, Maximilian also saw chronic revolts in the Netherlands, typically about taxation. In 1488 he was taken captive and held for more than three months in Brugge, where he...

Mazarin

In January 1630, during the war between Spain and France over the succession to the crown of Mantua, Sachetti’s successor, Antonio Cardinal Barberini, sent Mazarin to France to negotiate with the great cardinal de Richelieu. The young man was fascinated by the powerful minister: “I resolved,” he wrote, “to devote myself to him entirely.” Soon afterward the young...

Morgan

Welsh buccaneer, most famous of the adventurers who plundered Spain’s Caribbean colonies during the late 17th century. Operating with the unofficial support of the English government, he undermined Spanish authority in the West Indies.

Napoleon

Still far inferior to the British navy, the French fleet needed the help of the Spanish, and even then the two fleets together could not hope to defeat more than one of the British squadrons. Spain was induced to declare war on Great Britain in December 1804, and it was decided that French and Spanish squadrons massed in the Antilles should lure a British squadron into these waters and defeat...

Palmerston

...coalition of the three emperors (of Austria, Prussia, and Russia) at Münchengrätz in 1833 was the 1834 Quadruple Alliance of Britain and France with the constitutional parties in Spain and Portugal. The French, however, became irked at the restraining element in British cooperation and did not see why they should not be as predominant in Spain as the British were in Portugal....

Pitt

...effect, the alliance served only one useful purpose: Prussia’s diplomatic support enabled Pitt in 1790 to triumph over the Spanish without having to go to war in the Nootka Sound dispute. Thus, the Spanish claim to a monopoly of trade and settlement on the western seaboard of North America was finally destroyed. Pitt’s intervention in eastern Europe, however, bore no such marks of triumph....

Pompey the Great

...law and order against him. The rising crushed, however, Pompey refused to disband his army, which he used to bring pressure on the Senate to send him with proconsular power to join Metellus Pius in Spain against the Marian leader Sertorius.

Richelieu

Up to this time Richelieu had had no insight into international relations, and the regard for Spain with which he was credited was probably genuine because he had had no occasion to question Spain’s ambitions. His year of office, however, coincided with war between Spain (ruled by a Habsburg dynasty) and Venice, which invoked its alliance with France. The resultant involvement persuaded...

San Martín

...1789 he was educated at the Seminary of Nobles in Madrid, leaving there to begin his military career as a cadet in the Murcia infantry regiment. For the next 20 years he was a loyal officer of the Spanish monarch, fighting against the Moors in Oran (1791); against the British (1798), who held him captive for more than a year; and against the Portuguese in the War of the Oranges (1801). He was...

Scipio Africanus the Elder

...the legal age, he replied, “If all the Roman people want to make me aedile, I am old enough.” Soon family and national disaster followed: his father and uncle were defeated and killed in Spain, where the Carthaginians swept forward to the Ebro River (211).

Scipio Africanus the Younger

...visiting Athenian philosophers whose views on political morality shocked more old-fashioned Romans, such as Cato. Scipio achieved public acclaim in 151. A series of disasters to Roman armies in Spain resulted in such reluctance to undertake military service in the peninsula that, in a dispute over the levy, the consuls who were responsible for it were even temporarily imprisoned by the...

Toussaint-Louverture

When France and Spain went to war in 1793, the black commanders joined the Spaniards of Santo Domingo, the eastern two-thirds of Hispaniola (now the Dominican Republic). Knighted and recognized as a general, Toussaint demonstrated extraordinary military ability and attracted such renowned warriors as his nephew Moïse and two future monarchs of Haiti, Jean-Jacques Dessalines and Henry...

battles and wars

American Revolution

The entrance of France into the war, followed by that of Spain in 1779 and the Netherlands in 1780, effected important changes in the naval aspect of the war. The Spanish and Dutch were not particularly active, but their role in keeping British naval forces tied down in Europe was significant. The British navy could not maintain an effective blockade of both the American coast and the enemies’...

...and America’s European allies. Still, American privateers swarmed around the British Isles, and by the end of the war they had captured 1,500 British merchant ships and 12,000 sailors. After 1780 Spain and the Netherlands were able to control much of the water around the British Isles, thus keeping the bulk of British naval forces tied down in Europe.

Battle of Lepanto

...help to Pope Pius V, who had tried since 1566 to form an alliance of Roman Catholic states. France and the Holy Roman Empire were preoccupied with the sweeping changes wrought by the Reformation. Spain offered hope, but Philip II, with an empty treasury, was faced with revolts in Andalusia and the Netherlands. Venice also deeply distrusted Spanish influence in Italy. Pius, however, was...

Battle of Rocroi

...War in which a French army of 22,000 men, under the Duke d’Enghien (later known as the Great Condé), annihilated a Spanish army of 26,000 men under Don Francisco de Melo, marking the end of Spain’s military ascendancy in Europe.

Battle of the Dunes

(June 14, 1658), during the Franco-Spanish War of 1648–59, a victory of French and British forces led by Henri de La Tour d’Auvergne, vicomte de Turenne, over Spanish forces near Dunkirk (then just north of the French frontier in the Spanish Netherlands). The victory led to the surrender of Dunkirk by Spain and eventually to the conclusion of the war with the Peace of the Pyrenees between...

Devolution War

Dutch War

...Sole Bay in 1672 and off Ostend and Kijkduin in 1673, each time frustrating an invasion of the republic. England then made peace with the Dutch in the Treaty of Westminster of February 1674. In 1673 Spain, the Holy Roman emperor, and Lorraine took the side of the Dutch against France, and so by the end of 1673 the French had been driven out of the Dutch Republic.

Eighty Years’ War

(1568–1648), the war of Netherlands independence from Spain, which led to the separation of the northern and southern Netherlands and to the formation of the United Provinces of the Netherlands (the Dutch Republic). The first phase of the war began with two unsuccessful invasions of the provinces by mercenary armies under Prince William I of Orange (1568 and 1572) and foreign-based raids...

French revolutionary wars

...Dumouriez and François-Christophe Kellermann turned back an invading Prussian-Austrian force at Valmy, and by November the French had occupied all of Belgium. Early in 1793 Austria, Prussia, Spain, the United Provinces, and Great Britain formed the first of seven coalitions that would oppose France over the next 23 years. In response to reverses at the hands of the First Coalition, the...

Italian Wars

Because the rulers of both France and Spain had dynastic claims in Italy, it was predictable that after the Hundred Years’ War in France in 1453 and the conquest of Granada by Spain in 1492 both powers would make Italy the battlefield of their conflicting ambitions. In the event, it was an Italian who called the foreigners into Italy. Prince (later King) Ferdinand of Naples, angry that his...

(1494–1559) series of violent wars for control of Italy. Fought largely by France and Spain but involving much of Europe, they resulted in the Spanish Habsburgs dominating Italy and shifted power from Italy to northwestern Europe. The wars began with the invasion of Italy by the French king Charles VIII in 1494. He took Naples, but an alliance between Maximilian I, Spain, and the pope...

...rural hinterlands even more than in previous decades. And, although independent action by the Italian states now had to yield to powerful initiatives from the newly unified monarchies of France and Spain, such foreign intervention echoed the policies of their medieval Angevin and Aragonese forebears.

Nootka Sound controversy

(1790), dispute over the seizure of vessels at Nootka Sound, an inlet on the western coast of Vancouver Island, that nearly caused a war between Great Britain and Spain. Its settlement ended the Spanish claim to a monopoly of trade and settlement on the western coast of North America and made possible the eventual expansion of the Canadian provinces to the Pacific.

Peninsular War

...his attention toward Britain and toward Sweden and Portugal, the two powers that remained allied or friendly to Britain. Russia, it was decided, would deal with Sweden, while Napoleon, allied to Spain since 1796, summoned (July 19) the Portuguese “to close their ports to the British and declare war on Britain.” His intention was to complete the Continental System designed to make...

Philippine Revolution

(1896–98), Filipino independence struggle that, after more than 300 years of Spanish colonial rule, exposed the weakness of Spanish administration but failed to evict Spaniards from the islands. The Spanish-American War brought Spain’s rule in the Philippines to a close in 1898 but precipitated the Philippine-American War, a bloody war between Filipino revolutionaries and the U.S. Army.

Punic Wars

...than the payment exacted immediately following the war. Eventually, however, under the leadership of Hamilcar Barca, his son Hannibal, and his son-in-law Hasdrubal, Carthage acquired a new base in Spain, whence they could renew the war against Rome.

...so weakened the Punic power that the prospect of renewing the war under favourable circumstances seemed remote. Yet Hamilcar Barca sought to rebuild Carthaginian strength by acquiring a dominion in Spain where Carthage might gain new wealth and manpower. Invested with an unrestricted foreign command, he spent the rest of his life founding a Spanish empire (237–228). His work was continued...

Concurrently with the great struggle in Italy, the Second Punic War was fought on several other fields. To the east King Philip V of Macedon began the First Macedonian War (214–205) in concert with the Carthaginians, when the Roman power seemed to be breaking up after Cannae. Although this compelled the Romans to stretch their already severely strained resources still further by sending...

Rif War and Abd el-Krim

leader of the Berber forces during the Rif War (1921–26) against Spanish and French rule in North Africa and founder of the short-lived Republic of the Rif (1923–26). A skilled tactician and a capable organizer, he led a liberation movement that made him the hero of the Maghrib (northwest Africa).

With the establishment of the Spanish protectorate in November 1912, Abd el-Krim’s fortunes improved appreciably. On the basis of his work in the Native Affairs Office he was named a
qāḍī in July 1913, and the following October he was designated
qāḍī al-quḍāt...

...mine, according to a U.S. naval court of inquiry—sank the USS
Maine with large loss of life in Havana harbour on February 15, 1898, events moved beyond the president’s control. Though Spain was willing to make large concessions to avoid war, it adamantly resisted what had become the minimum public and official U.S. demand—Spanish withdrawal from Cuba and recognition of the...

Spanish Civil War

(1936–39), military revolt against the Republican government of Spain, supported by conservative elements within the country. When an initial military coup failed to win control of the entire country, a bloody civil war ensued, fought with great ferocity on both sides. The Nationalists, as...

Thirty Years’ War

...and Habsburg, and a network of Protestant towns and principalities that relied on the chief anti-Catholic powers of Sweden and the United Netherlands, which had at last thrown off the yoke of Spain after a struggle lasting 80 years. A parallel struggle involved the rivalry of France with the Habsburgs of the empire and with the Habsburgs of Spain, who had been attempting to construct a...

...to the childless Matthias), was prevented from doing so by the outbreak of war between his Croatian subjects and the neighbouring republic of Venice (the Uskok War, 1615–18). Philip of Spain was also involved in war: in 1613–15 and 1616–17, Spanish forces in Lombardy fought the troops of the duke of Savoy over the succession to the childless duke of Mantua. Spain could...

War of Jenkins’ Ear

war between Great Britain and Spain that began in October 1739 and eventually merged into the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–48). It was precipitated by an incident that took place in 1738 when Captain Robert Jenkins appeared before a committee of the House of Commons and exhibited what he alleged to be his own amputated ear, cut off in April 1731 in the West Indies by Spanish coast...

War of the Spanish Succession

(1701–14), conflict that arose out of the disputed succession to the throne of Spain following the death of the childless Charles II, the last of the Spanish Habsburgs. In an effort to regulate the impending succession, to which there were three principal claimants, England, the Dutch...

colonization and exploration

...one-third. He could not convince the Portuguese scientists nor the merchants of Lisbon that his idea was worth backing; but eventually he obtained the support of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain. The sovereigns probably argued that the cost of equipping the expedition would not be very great; the loss, if it failed, could be borne; the gain, should it succeed, was...

During the early 19th century, however, there was a conspicuous exception to the trend of colonial growth, and that was the decline of the Portuguese and Spanish empires in the Western Hemisphere. The occasion for the decolonization was provided by the Napoleonic Wars. The French occupation of the Iberian Peninsula in 1807, combined with the ensuing years of intense warfare until 1814 on that...

Africa

...of sea trade with western Africa were the Dutch, who had been some of the principal distributors in northwestern Europe of the Asian, African, and American produce imported into Portugal and Spain. After the northern Netherlands had revolted against Spanish rule, however, and Philip II of Spain (who since 1580 had been king of Portugal also) had sought to punish the Dutch merchants by...

...caused the Portuguese people and army to overthrow their dictatorship. Independence was quickly recognized for Guinea-Bissau in 1974 and for the Cape Verde Islands and Sao Tome and Principe in 1975. Spain concluded in 1968 that the best way to preserve its interests in equatorial Africa was to grant independence to its people without preparing them for it. The result was chaos.

American Indians

Spain, France, England, and Russia colonized Northern America for reasons that differed from one another’s and that were reflected in their formal policies concerning indigenous peoples. The Spanish colonized the Southeast, the Southwest, and California. Their goal was to create a local peasant class; indigenous peoples were missionized, relocated, and forced to work for the Spanish crown and...

Americas

...the Indian Ocean and its approaches. Mercantile interests, crusading and missionary zeal, and scientific curiosity were intermingled as the motives for this epic achievement. Similar hopes inspired Spanish exploitation of the discovery by Christopher Columbus of the Caribbean outposts of the American continent in 1492. The Treaties of Tordesillas and Saragossa in 1494 and 1529 defined the...

...institutions of the vanquished, particularly in religion but also in theatre, poetry, and all forms of oral literature. Mexico City soon became a cultural centre, with poets, many of them born in Spain, who were attuned to every trend back in Europe. Poets already recognized in Spain, such as the Sevillian Gutierre de Cetina and Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, lived in Mexico, as did Spanish-born...

Though initially lagging behind the Portuguese in the arts of navigation and exploration, the Spanish quickly closed that gap in the decades following Columbus’s voyages to America. First in the Caribbean and then in spectacular conquests of New Spain and Peru, they captured the imagination, and the envy, of the European world.

Arizona

The documented record of the European explorers and settlers of the region began in Mexico in the 1530s with Spaniards who wrote about the legend of Eldorado and the Seven Golden Cities of Cíbola. In 1539 Fray Marcos de Niza, a Franciscan priest, entered Arizona in search of riches and hoping to find Native Americans to convert to Christianity. Fearful of the hostility he faced from the...

Australia

Viceroys of Spain’s American empire regularly sought new lands. One such expedition, from Peru in 1567, commanded by Álvaro de Mendaña, discovered the Solomon Islands. Excited by finding gold, Mendaña hoped that he had found the great southern land and that Spain would colonize there. In 1595 Mendaña sailed again but failed to rediscover the Solomons. One of his...

Aymara Indians

The Spanish conquest, beginning in 1535, brought seekers of gold and Indian labour, followed by Dominican and Jesuit friars in search of converts. The colonial agrarian economy was based on the systematic exploitation of the Aymara in agriculture, in the mines, as household servants, and on the coca plantations in the jungles. A period of rebellion began in 1780, during which the Indians killed...

Belize

...Maya lived in the area now known as Belize for centuries before the arrival of Europeans, as manifested by more than a dozen major ruins such as La Milpa, Xunantunich, Altun Ha, and Caracol. The Spanish penetrated the area in the 16th and 17th centuries and tried to convert the Maya to Christianity, but with little success. The Maya population had begun to decline long before the Spaniards...

California

...Cabrillo became the first European to sight the region that is present-day California in 1542, there were about 130,000 Native Americans inhabiting the area. The territory was neglected by Spain for more than two centuries (until 1769) because of reports of the region’s poverty and a general slowdown of Spanish exploration. The merchant Sebastián Vizcaíno sailed from...

California Indians

California was colonized by the Spanish beginning in 1769, when Junípero Serra and his successors began to build a series of missions along the region’s southern Pacific Coast. Accompanied by soldiers and soon followed by ranchers and other colonial developers, these missionaries upon their arrival initiated a long period of cultural rupture for most of California’s indigenous peoples....

Central America

Although there had been warfare, trade, and other kinds of intercultural contact in pre-Columbian times, the impact of the Spanish conquest was different in kind as well as in scale, involving as it did not only unprecedented military power but also a wholly new economic system and a deliberate policy of reshaping Indian life to conform to European norms.

Rodrigo de Bastidas was first to establish Spain’s claim to the isthmus, sailing along the Darién coast in March 1501, but he made no settlement. A year later Christopher Columbus, on his fourth voyage, sailed along the Caribbean coast from the Bay of Honduras to Panama, accumulating much information and a little gold but again making no settlement. Other navigators from Spain followed,...

Chile

Chile exhibits many of the traits that typically characterize Latin American countries. It was colonized by Spain, and the culture that evolved was largely Spanish; the influence of the original Indian inhabitants is negligible. The people became largely mestizo, a blend of Spanish and Indian bloodlines. The society developed with a small elite controlling most of the land, the wealth, and the...

Colorado

The Native Americans, however, were displaced by Spanish explorers from Mexico in search of cities of gold and silver. Fearing attacks by the United States, they strengthened the Spanish frontier in the 1840s with huge land grants reaching as far north as the Arkansas River. On these grants were established the first permanent settlements of non-Native American people in Colorado and, in 1851,...

Costa Rica

...him a number of items of gold, possibly prompting Columbus to name the land “Rich Coast,” although there is some dispute over the origin of the name. Other more promising regions forced Spain to neglect the area, however, and the first significant settlement in what is now Costa Rica did not take place until much later. In 1564 the Spanish crown established the village of Cartago in...

Cuba

...economic development from Spanish colonial times in the early 16th century. Cuba is endowed with a number of such harbours, but Havana’s on the north coast was prized above the others by the early Spanish colonizers. With land on both sides of the harbour, the port was easily defended. The early colonists erected a number of fortifications in the area that withstood most invaders. In colonial...

Ecuador

...son by an Ecuadoran Cara princess, Atahuallpa. This led to a territorial dispute, and Atahuallpa won the ensuing civil war after a major battle near Riobamba in 1532; at just about the same time, a Spanish expedition led by Francisco Pizarro appeared off the coast. Atahuallpa was executed the next year as the Spanish conquest spread. In many parts of what is now Ecuador, Inca rule was less than...

El Salvador

The Spanish conquest and colonization of El Salvador began in 1524 with the arrival of an expedition from Guatemala led by Pedro de Alvarado. Alvarado’s troops met determined opposition from a Nahua tribe, the Pipil, that occupied much of the region west of the Lempa River. However, superior tactics and armaments enabled the Spaniards to push on to the Pipil capital of Cuscatlán....

Equatorial Guinea

...1472 and 1475, most likely that of 1474. By the Treaty of Tordesillas (June 7, 1494), the Portuguese had exclusive trade rights in Africa, and it was not until 1778 that they agreed to cede to Spain the islands of Annobón and Fernando Po as well as rights on the mainland coast between the Ogooué and Niger rivers. These cessions were designed to give Spain its own source of...

Falkland Islands

...islands’ first settlement, on East Falkland, in 1764, and he named the islands the Malovines. The British, in 1765, were the first to settle West Falkland, but they were driven off in 1770 by the Spanish, who had bought out the French settlement about 1767. The British outpost on West Falkland was restored in 1771 after threat of war, but then the British withdrew from the island in 1774 for...

Florida

The Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León, in search of the legendary Fountain of Youth, landed there in 1513 and took possession of the territory for Spain. In 1564 France established Fort Caroline near the mouth of the St. Johns River, about 35 miles (55 km) north. A year later, in order to maintain Spanish sovereignty over Florida, Pedro Menéndez de Avilés destroyed the...

Georgia

About 1540, Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto, on a quest for silver and gold, led the first European expedition into the area that is now Georgia. There he encountered the highly organized agriculturalists of Mississippian culture. Directly or indirectly, the Spanish expedition was disastrous for the indigenous population. In addition to the hundreds of people they killed or enslaved, the...

Guam

Ferdinand Magellan probably landed on Guam in 1521. Spain officially claimed the island in 1565 but did not attempt to conquer it until the latter part of the 17th century. After an uprising in 1670 and 25 years of intermittent warfare, the Spanish subdued the population with considerable bloodshed. Diseases introduced by the Europeans, particularly smallpox and influenza, also played an...

Guatemala

Under the Spanish, a capital was reestablished at the nearby location of present-day Antigua Guatemala. The capital achieved a certain magnificence, and the other major towns acquired some aspects of Spanish culture, but the outlying areas were only lightly affected. When the capital was razed by a series of earthquakes in 1773, it was moved by royal order to the present site of Guatemala...

Guyana

The earliest-known American Indians of the Guianas called the land
Surinen, whence the name Suriname originated. The earliest European explorers were Spaniards under Amerigo Vespucci in the early 1500s. Despite Spain’s claim to the area in 1593, the Dutch began in 1602 to settle along the Essequibo, Courantyne, and Cayenne rivers and were followed by the Dutch West India Company (1621),...

...of Arawak, Carib, and possibly Warao (Warrau). The early communities practiced shifting agriculture supplemented by hunting. Explorer Christopher Columbus sighted the Guyana coast in 1498, and Spain subsequently claimed, but largely avoided, the area between the Orinoco and Amazon deltas, a region long known as the Wild Coast. It was the Dutch who finally began European settlement,...

Hispaniola

...is nearly 400 miles (650 km), and its width is 150 miles (241 km). Christopher Columbus landed on the island in 1492 and named it La Isla Española (Hispaniola in its Anglicized form). During Spanish colonial times, the island’s position on the northern flank of the Caribbean Sea provided an excellent location for control of Spanish expansion to Cuba, Mexico, Panama, and South America.

Honduras

When the Spanish arrived to colonize Honduras, the land was occupied by a variety of indigenous peoples, the most advanced of whom were the Maya. Gold stimulated Spanish conquest of the area early in the 16th century, and the Honduran gold-mining town of Gracias became the capital of Spanish Central America (the Audiencia de los Confines) in 1544. By 1548, however, the Spaniards had exhausted...

Inca

Meanwhile, the Spaniards had landed at Tumbes on the northern coast of Peru early in 1532 and were seeking an interview with Atahuallpa so that they could kidnap him. It is clear that they understood the nature of the Inca civil war and were dealing with emissaries from both factions. Their actions, however, must have seemed puzzling to Atahuallpa. On the one hand, Pizarro and his men were...

India

The Portuguese thus had few friends in the East to help them in a crisis, and in 1580 the Portuguese kingdom was annexed to Spain; thenceforth until 1640, Portuguese interests were sacrificed to those of Spain. Because of the Spanish failure to quell a Dutch rising in the Netherlands, and after the English defeated the Spanish Armada in 1588, the route to the East was opened to both English and...

Latin America

...to Mexico, Central America, and the islands of the Caribbean whose inhabitants speak a Romance language. The peoples of this large area shared the experience of conquest and colonization by the Spaniards and Portuguese from the late 15th through the 18th century as well as movements of independence from Spain and Portugal in the early 19th century. Even since independence, many of the...

Lisbon

In 1578 King Sebastian of Portugal was killed in a disastrous invasion of Morocco: two years later, the Spanish pushed into Portugal, and Philip II of Spain became king of both countries. In 1588 it was from Lisbon that the Invincible Armada sailed against England, Portugal’s oldest ally. In the half century that followed, Lisbon lived relatively well as a port for the riches of the Spanish...

Mexico

...overlordship by founding the city of Veracruz and establishing a town council (
cabildo) that in turn empowered him to conquer Mexico in the name of Charles I of Spain. Meanwhile, rumours of ships as large as houses reached Tenochtitlán, and to them were added prophecies of the imminent return of the deity Quetzalcóatl.

Mexico City

The first Spanish conquistadors to gaze on the city were awed by its size and orderliness, and they compared its grandeur to that of European centres such as Sevilla (Seville) and Salamanca in Spain and especially Venice in Italy, with its comparably intricate network of navigation canals, bridges, and causeways. In a report to the Spanish king, conquistador Hernán Cortés wrote of...

Mississippi

...led a large expedition into Mississippi and wintered along the Pontotoc Ridge. In the following spring he reached the Mississippi River, but, because he found no gold or silver in the region, the Spanish directed their efforts elsewhere.

Morocco

Immediately after ʿAbd al-Raḥmān’s death in 1859, a dispute with Spain over the boundaries of the Spanish enclave at Ceuta led Madrid to declare war. Spain captured Tétouan in the following year. Peace had to be bought with an indemnity of $20 million, the enlargement of Ceuta’s frontiers, and the promise to cede to Spain another enclave—Ifni.

The Spanish protectorate over northern Morocco extended from Larache (El-Araish) on the Atlantic to 30 miles (48 km) beyond Melilla (already a Spanish possession) on the Mediterranean. The mountainous Tamazight-speaking area had often escaped the sultan’s control. Spain also received a strip of desert land in the southwest, known as Tarfaya, adjoining Spanish Sahara. In 1934, when the French...

Native American history

As the primary European power in Middle America, Spain focused on the extraction of wealth, the increase of territory, and the production of a Catholicized peasant class. During the first period of colonization, Spanish Jesuits set up missions and reservations in northwestern Middle America; these usually included housing for clergy, indigenous peoples, and (in some cases) soldiers, as well as...

Spain’s overseas agenda emphasized the extraction of wealth, with secondary goals that included the relocation of armies, the conversion of indigenous peoples to Roman Catholicism, and the re-creation of the feudal social order to which the Spanish were accustomed. The first country to send large expeditions to the Americas, Spain focused its initial efforts on the conquest of the wealthy Aztec...

...As the conquistadors moved inland, tribes at first treated them in the manner accorded to any large group of visitors, providing gifts to the leaders and provisions to the rank and file. However, the Spaniards either misread or ignored the intentions of their hosts and often forced native commoners, who customarily provided temporary labour to visitors as a courtesy gesture, into slavery.

While the 18th-century wars of empire raged in Europe and eastern North America, colonization continued apace in the western part of the continent. There the principal imperial powers were Spain and Russia. In the Southwest the Spanish continued to dominate the indigenous nations. The tribes there, particularly the Puebloans, continued to face severe punishment for “heretical”...

New Mexico

Reports of the fabled Seven Golden Cities of Cíbola brought the first European explorers into New Mexico in 1540, led by the Spanish adventurer Francisco Vásquez de Coronado. The journey proved fruitless, however, and they soon returned to New Spain (Mexico). After several decades of desultory exploration by soldiers and friars, Juan de Oñate of New Spain was given...

Nicaragua

The Spanish soldier Pedro Arias Dávila (known as Pedrarias) led the first expedition to found permanent colonies in what is present-day Nicaragua. In 1519, when Pedrarias became the governor of Panama, he sent kinsman Gil González Dávila to explore northward toward Nicaragua. González Dávila made the first attempt to conquer the region in 1522 but was repulsed...

North America

Colonial policies strongly affected the evolving human patterns of North America. It often is stated that Spanish interests centred around God and gold—the Christianizing of the Indians and quick wealth from precious metals—but this is an overstatement. The Spanish also were deeply involved in the land, which they developed into huge haciendas (estates) that were worked by tenants...

Northern Mariana Islands

In 1565 Miguel López de Legazpi landed at Umatac, Guam, and proclaimed Spanish sovereignty over the Ladrones; some priests went ashore to perform mass. No colonies were started at that time, however, because the Spanish were more interested in conquests in the Americas, the Philippines, and the Moluccas. The British adventurer Thomas Cavendish was the next to visit the Marianas, in 1588...

Oklahoma

Coronado claimed the area for Spain, but it became little more than a highway for wide-ranging Spanish explorers. In 1714 Louis Juchereau de Saint-Denis visited Oklahoma, and other Frenchmen subsequently established a fur trade with the Native Americans. France and Spain struggled for control until 1763, leaving only the natives to contest Spanish authority until the return of the French flag...

Pacific Islands

...Pukapuka Atoll, in the Tuamotu Archipelago, and Guam. After his death in the Philippines, his expedition encountered some of the Carolines. These northern islands were further explored by the Spaniards as they established a galley trade between Manila, in the Philippines, and Acapulco, in western Mexico. The next major Spanish explorations were made by Álvaro de Mendaña de...

Pacific Ocean

Pacific islanders had long inhabited their homelands before the European “discovery” of the Pacific in the 16th century. European exploration can be divided into three phases: Spanish and Portuguese; Dutch; and English and French. The Spanish and Portuguese period began with the voyages in the early 1520s of Ferdinand Magellan and, after his death, his crew members. Later...

Panama

In 1501 the Spaniard Rodrigo de Bastidas, in the company of Juan de la Cosa and Vasco Núñez de Balboa, was the first European to explore the Atlantic coast of the Isthmus of Panama. In 1510 Diego de Nicuesa, another Spanish explorer, established the settlement of Nombre de Dios at the mouth of the Chagres River, and to the southwest, Alonso de Ojeda founded San Sebastian de...

Paraguay

The first colonial settlements were established by Domingo Martínez de Irala in the period 1536–56. The first Spanish colonists, unsuccessful in their search for gold, settled peacefully among the Guaraní in the region of Asunción, the present capital of Paraguay. Those first settlers established their notorious harems of Guaraní women, and their ethnically...

Patagonia

...Magellan suggest that these people were moving up the mainland coast about 5,100 years ago. The robust and tall Tehuelche were divided into northern and southern groups, each with its own dialect. Spanish explorers found the Tehuelche living as nomadic hunters of guanaco and rhea. The surviving descendants of these people are few in number, nearly all of them having been assimilated into...

Peru

The Spanish conquest of the Incas in 1532 was accompanied by several dramatic changes in Andean settlement patterns. First, the Spanish were oriented toward their European homeland. Thus, Spanish cities such as Piura (1532), Lima (1535), and Trujillo (1534) were established near ports that were the sea links to Spain. Second, Spanish settlements focused on the extraction of resources, leading...

Spanish interest in the west coast of South America grew after Vasco Núñez de Balboa discovered the Pacific Ocean in 1513, but it was not until 1524 that Francisco Pizarro, aided by another soldier, Diego de Almagro, and a priest, Hernando de Luque, undertook explorations that led to the conquest of Peru. By 1527 they were convinced of the wealth of the Inca empire. Failing to win...

...barangays. A powerful
datu as far north as Manila embraced Islam. It was in the midst of this wave of Islamic proselytism that the Spanish arrived. Had the Spanish come a century later or had their motives been strictly commercial, Filipinos today might be a predominantly Muslim people.

Río de la Plata

the final of the four viceroyalties that Spain created during its colonization of Central and South America. Including the territory now comprising Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Bolivia, the new viceroyalty (established in 1776) controlled an area previously under the administration of the Viceroyalty of Peru. The decision to create a fourth viceroyalty was a result both of King Charles...

slavery

...close to the fields and the sugar mill. The requirements of sugar planters brought about the introduction of agricultural slavery to the Western Hemisphere. It began as early as 1518, when the Spanish government granted a license to import some 4,000 African slaves into the Spanish colonies. The plantation system and the consequent demand for African slaves spread during the next two...

South America

In the Iberian Peninsula the impetus of the counteroffensive against the Moors carried the Portuguese to probe the West African coastline and the Spanish to attempt the expulsion of Islam from the western Mediterranean. In the last years of the 15th century, Portuguese navigators established the sea route to India and within a decade had secured control of the trade routes in the Indian Ocean...

Until the end of the era of Iberian domination, only the Spanish and Portuguese were admitted to their South American colonies. The rigid exclusion of all other foreigners had but few exceptions, though a small number of non-Iberian Europeans settled as a result of illegal or tolerated immigration. Most of the Spaniards came from Castile and the southern regions. Little is known about the...

South American peoples

Inca culture and society were deeply affected by the Spanish conquest settlement. Spanish patterns of bureaucratic government replaced those of the Inca Empire, land use and ownership changed radically, tribute and forced labour threatened the agricultural base of the old society, ancient deities succumbed to Roman Catholicism, and community and domestic life were geared to the demands of the...

South Carolina

The first Europeans to visit South Carolina, in 1521, were Spanish explorers from Santo Domingo (Hispaniola). In 1526 Lucas Vásquez de Ayllón founded what is believed to have been the first white European settlement in South Carolina, but this Spanish colony failed within a few months. French Protestants under Jean Ribaut made an unsuccessful attempt to occupy the area of Port...

Southeast Asia

Christianity made its appearance in the early 16th century, brought by the Portuguese, Spanish, and, somewhat later, the French. It spread easily in the northern Philippines, where Spanish missionaries did not have to compete with an organized religious tradition and could count on the interested support of a government bent on colonization. Unlike the religions with which Southeast Asia had...

Southeast Indians

Although permanent colonial settlements were not established in the region until 1565, when the Spanish founded Saint Augustine in present-day Florida, the peoples of the Southeast suffered greatly during the 16th century. The earliest expeditions, by Juan Ponce de Léon (1513, 1521) and Panfilo de Narváez (1528; best known for the narrative produced by Álvar...

Taiwan

...and Japanese pirates. The Portuguese, who first visited the island in 1590 and named it Ilha Formosa (“Beautiful Island”), made several unsuccessful attempts at settlement. The Dutch and Spaniards established more lasting settlements, the Dutch at An-p’ing in southwestern Taiwan in 1624, the Spaniards in 1626 at Chi-lung in the north. Until 1646, when the Dutch seized the Spanish...

Tangier

In 1580 Tangier passed, with Portugal itself, to Spain; it returned to independent Portugal in 1656. In 1662 it was transferred to the English crown as part of the dowry of Catherine of Braganza, wife of Charles II. The English put great hopes on this new possession, but, though a fine mole (breakwater) was built and a new fortification erected, the expense of maintaining the city against...

Texas

By the 1730s the Spanish had sent more than 30 expeditions into Texas. San Antonio, which by 1718 housed a military post and a mission (the Alamo), had become the administrative centre. With military support, missions were established in Nacogdoches in East Texas, in Goliad in the south, and near El Paso in the far west. The French also explored Texas. The explorations of René-Robert...

Venezuela

...Indian houses on stilts over water. During the first quarter-century of contact, the Europeans limited themselves to slave hunting and pearl fishing on the northeastern coast; the first permanent Spanish settlement, Cumaná, was not made until 1523. In the second quarter of the 16th century, the centre of activity shifted to the northwestern coast, where the Welser banking house of...

West Florida

in U.S. history, dispute over the status of the territory lying on the Gulf of Mexico between the Apalachicola and Mississippi rivers. Though Spain claimed the area as part of its New World discovery in 1492, France occupied it as a portion of Louisiana after 1695. Under the Treaty of Paris of 1763, West Florida was held by Great Britain, which returned it to Spain under the Treaty of Paris of...

West Indies

Historians have estimated that the pre-Columbian inhabitants of the West Indies numbered approximately six million in 1492. With Columbus’s arrival, the Caribbean Sea was transformed into a Spanish lake. Settlement by the Spanish concentrated on the Greater Antilles and above all on the densely populated island of Hispaniola (today divided into Haiti and the Dominican Republic), where the first...

Western Sahara

...and by partisans of Sheikh Māʾ al-ʿAynayn, who between 1898 and 1902 constructed the town of Semara at an inland oasis. Cape Juby (Ṭarfāyah) was occupied for Spain by Col. Francisco Bens in 1916, Güera was occupied in 1920, and Semara and the rest of the interior were occupied in 1934.

diplomacy

Amiens

(March 27, 1802), an agreement signed at Amiens, Fr., by Britain, France, Spain, and the Batavian Republic (the Netherlands), achieving a peace in Europe for 14 months during the Napoleonic Wars. It ignored some questions that divided Britain and France, such as the fate of the Belgian provinces, Savoy, and Switzerland and the trade relations between Britain and the French-controlled European...

Nijmegen Treaties

peace treaties of 1678–79 that ended the Dutch War, in which France had opposed Spain and the Dutch Republic (now the Netherlands). France gained advantages by arranging terms with each of its enemies separately.

Pacte de Famille

any of three defensive alliances (1733, 1743, and 1761) between France and Spain, so called because both nations were ruled by members of the Bourbon family. The Pactes de Famille generally had the effect of involving Spain in European and colonial wars on the side of the French Bourbons (e.g., the Seven Years’ War, 1756–63). Spain also followed French policy in the American Revolution...

Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis

(April 3, 1559), agreement marking the end of the 65-year (1494–1559) struggle between France and Spain for the control of Italy, leaving Habsburg Spain the dominant power there for the next 150 years. In the last phase of the war, fought mostly outside of Italy, France was beaten at the battles of Saint-Quentin (1557) and Gravelines (1558). These defeats, coupled with the beginning of...

Peace of Paris

(1783), collection of treaties concluding the American Revolution and signed by representatives of Great Britain on one side and the United States, France, and Spain on the other. Preliminary articles (often called the Preliminary Treaty of Paris) were signed at Paris between Britain and the United States on November 30, 1782. On September 3, 1783, three definitive treaties were...

Peace of the Pyrenees

During the years from the end of the Thirty Years’ War until 1659 Spain and France engaged in almost continuous warfare. During the struggle Spain found itself also involved in hostilities with England, and the real decay of the Spanish monarchy became rapidly apparent. Any assistance that might have been hoped for from the Holy Roman emperor was prevented by the formation of leagues of German...

Peace of Westphalia

European settlements of 1648, which brought to an end the Eighty Years’ War between Spain and the Dutch and the German phase of the Thirty Years’ War. The peace was negotiated, from 1644, in the Westphalian towns of Münster and Osnabrück. The Spanish-Dutch treaty was signed on January 30, 1648. The treaty of October 24, 1648, comprehended the Holy Roman emperor Ferdinand III, the...

Quadruple Alliance of 1718

alliance formed Aug. 2, 1718, when Austria joined the Triple Alliance of Britain, the Dutch Republic (United Provinces), and France to prevent Spain from altering the terms of the Treaty of Utrecht (1713). Philip V of Spain, influenced by his wife, Elizabeth Farnese of Parma, and her adviser Giulio Alberoni, seized control of Sardinia and Sicily (assigned to Austria and Savoy, respectively, by...

Quadruple Alliance of 1834

alliance formed on April 22, 1834, between Britain, France, and the more liberal claimants to the thrones of Spain and Portugal against the conservative claimants to those thrones. The alliance successfully supported Maria Cristiana, who was acting as regent for Isabella II in Spain and had allied herself with the liberals against the pretender Don Carlos in the First Carlist War...

Treaty of Medina del Campo

(1489), treaty between Spain and England, which, although never fully accepted by either side, established the dominating themes in Anglo-Spanish relations in the late 15th and early 16th centuries. It was signed at Medina del Campo, in northern Spain, on March 27 and ratified by Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile the following day. It settled the details of a proposed marriage between...

Treaty of Paris of 1763

...the Franco-British conflicts of the Seven Years’ War (called the French and Indian War in North America) and signed by representatives of Great Britain and Hanover on one side and France and Spain on the other, with Portugal expressly understood to be included. It was signed in Paris on Feb. 10, 1763.

internal affairs

anarchism

The reconciliation of anarchism and syndicalism was most complete and most successful in Spain; for a long period the anarchist movement in that country remained the most numerous and the most powerful in the world. The first known Spanish anarchist, Ramón de la Sagra, a disciple of Proudhon, founded the world’s first anarchist journal,
El Porvenir, in La...

Basque autonomy

...of the Oria River. Service industries are highly developed in the Basque Country; Donostia–San Sebastián is a major resort city, and Bilbao is one of the leading financial centres of Spain. Since the opening of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in 1997, tourism has become an increasingly important segment of the economy.

Bourbon dynasty

The Bourbon accession to Spain came about partly because the descendants of Louis XIV’s consort, the Spanish infanta Marie-Thérèse, were in 1700 the closest surviving relatives of the childless Charles II of Spain and partly because, although at her marriage the infanta had renounced...

Enlightenment

The Enlightenment was a European phenomenon: examples of enlightened thought and writing can be found in every country. There were important reforms in late 18th-century Spain under the benevolent rule of Charles III. There was little originality, however, about the
Luces and its disciples. The spirit of acceptance was stronger than that of inquiry; Spain apparently was a casebook...

fascism

Forms of fascism took root in other Latin countries. In Spain in 1923 General Miguel Primo de Rivera seized power with the approval of the king. He dissolved Parliament, imprisoned democratic leaders, suspended trial by jury, censored the press, and placed the country under martial law. He tried to establish a fully fascist regime based on “Country, Religion, and the Monarchy,” but...

Spain’s fascist movement, the Falange (“Phalanx”), founded in 1933 by José Antonio Primo de Rivera, never came to power, but many of its members were absorbed into the military dictatorship of Francisco Franco, which itself displayed many fascist characteristics. In Poland the anti-Semitic Falanga, led by Boleslaw Piasecki, was influential but was unable to overthrow the...

House of Habsburg

...growing throughout Europe, these bankers were able to mobilize capital in fabulous amounts. In 1519 Jakob II Fugger the Rich of Augsburg amassed nearly two million florins for the Habsburg king of Spain, Charles I, who used the money to bribe the imperial electors (he was successfully elected Holy Roman emperor as Charles V). Money was shaping the politics of Europe.

...(France frustrated his proxy marriage to the Breton heiress Anne), he procured Philip’s marriage, in 1496, to Joan, prospective heiress of Castile and Aragon: thus securing for his family not only Spain, with Naples–Sicily and Sardinia, but also the immense dominions the Spaniards were about to conquer in America. Maximilian’s matrimonial achievements were the occasion of the famous...

industry

...raising. Its head had both administrative and legal powers. Because of favourable trade with the Netherlands, a leading textile producer, the Mesta controlled the largest and most profitable “industry” in medieval Spain. It was granted generous
fueros (“privileges”) by the crown, and each September its members drove their sheep to...

Italy

Spain thus established complete hegemony over all the Italian states except Venice, which alone maintained its independence. Several Italian states were ruled directly, while others remained Spanish dependents. Naples, Sicily, and Sardinia (which had all been dependencies of Aragon), as well as Milan, came under direct Spanish rule and owed their allegiance to the sovereign according to their...

After the death of the last Spanish Habsburg, Charles II (ruled 1665–1700), fighting over the remnants of Spain’s European empire consumed the continent’s powers in the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–14). The Treaties of Utrecht (1713) and Rastatt (1714) inaugurated a new pattern of state relations in Italy between Austrian Habsburgs, Spanish Bourbons (with Bourbon France...

Spain experienced a revolution in 1820, in which the Liberals gained power and reestablished a constitution promulgated in 1812. This event had notable repercussions in Italy. In the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, former members of Murat’s army, affiliated with the Carbonari, marched on Naples (July 2, 1820) to the cry of “Long live liberty and the constitution.” They found support in...

Naples

...for domination of Italy. It was claimed by the French king Charles VIII, who held it briefly (1495). Won by the Spanish in 1504, Naples and Sicily were ruled by viceroys for two centuries. Under Spain the country was regarded merely as a source of revenue and experienced a steady economic decline. Provoked by high taxes, the lower and middle classes rebelled in July 1647 (Revolt of...

popular front

A broad-based popular front government was elected in Spain in February 1936. Considerable turmoil followed, however, and in July 1936 General Francisco Franco led a Fascist insurrection against the legal government. At first the Soviets, and indeed Léon Blum’s French Popular Front, advocated nonintervention. Eventually the Soviets did intervene, supplying limited military aid to the...

Reformation

On the other hand, the Reformation gained no lasting hold in Spain or Italy. In Spain this was primarily the result of the conflicts of the previous century, when Christians strove to achieve political, cultural, and religious unification by converting or expelling the unbelievers—the Jews and the Moors. The Inquisition was introduced in 1482 to root out all remnants of Jewish practice...

Renaissance

...of world prominence for which it was poorly prepared. Within the last decade of the 15th century, the Spaniards took the kingdom of Navarre in the north; stormed the last Muslim stronghold in Spain, the kingdom of Granada; and launched a campaign of religious unification by pressing tens of thousands of Muslims and Jews to choose between baptism and expulsion, at the same time...

Second Republic

Spanish Inquisition

(1478–1834), judicial institution ostensibly established to combat heresy in Spain. In practice, the Spanish Inquisition served to consolidate power in the monarchy of the newly unified Spanish kingdom, but it achieved that end through infamously brutal methods.

unification

...of the European states. This political development took place through processes of internal unification and the abolition of local privileges by the centralizing force of dynastic monarchies. In Spain the union of Aragon, Valencia, and Catalonia under John II of Aragon was extended to association with Castile through the marriage of his son Ferdinand with the Castilian heiress Isabella. The...

viscountcy

Viscounts had been created in Catalonia by Charlemagne in the 8th century, whence the title had spread, with diminishing functions and increasingly significant noble rank, to Aragon and to Castile. Philip IV of Spain introduced the system of
vizcondados previos (regulations of 1631 and of 1664); under this, no one could proceed to the rank of ...

international relations

Amistad mutiny

On July 2, 1839, the Spanish schooner Amistad was sailing from Havana to Puerto Príncipe, Cuba, when the ship’s unwilling passengers, 53 slaves recently abducted from Africa, revolted. Led by Joseph Cinqué, they killed the captain and the cook but spared the life of a Spanish navigator, so that he could sail them home to Sierra Leone. The navigator...

Austria

From 1701 to 1714 Austria was involved in hostilities with France—the War of the Spanish Succession—over the heir to the Spanish throne. The childless king Charles II of Spain, a Habsburg, had willed all his possessions to a Bourbon prince—a grandson of Louis XIV of France. All those who disliked the idea of a French hegemony in Europe consequently united against the French....

...among its senior officials. The army sent forth to meet Frederick suffered defeat in the Battle of Mollwitz in April 1741. This defeat prompted the formation of an alliance of France, Bavaria, and Spain, joined later by Saxony and eventually by Prussia itself, to dismember the Habsburg monarchy. Faced by this serious threat, Maria Theresa called together her father’s experienced advisers and...

Belgium

...and Luxembourg) as well as the northern provinces (whose area roughly corresponded to that of the present-day Kingdom of the Netherlands) had dynastic links with the Austrian Habsburgs and then with Spain and the Austrian Habsburgs together. Later, as a consequence of revolt in 1567, the southern provinces became subject to Spain (1579), then to the Austrian Habsburgs (1713), to France (1795),...

Byzantine Empire

...the West, Justinian’s successes were even more spectacular. By 550 the Moorish threat had ended in North Africa. In 552 the armies of Justinian intervened in a quarrel among the Visigothic rulers of Spain, and the East Roman troops overstayed the invitation extended them, seizing the opportunity to occupy on a more-permanent basis certain towns in the southeastern corner of the Iberian...

Canada

...the government disbanded the Canadian Airborne Regiment, which had been tainted by charges of torture and murder while serving in Somalia. Shortly thereafter Canada became involved in a dispute with Spain over Spanish commercial fishing in Canadian waters off Newfoundland. A Spanish fishing boat was seized, and tensions mounted between the two countries before an international agreement was...

China

...would not be rebuffed, and by 1557 they had taken control of a settlement at the walled-off end of a coastal peninsula (present-day Macau) and were trading periodically at nearby Guangzhou. In 1575 Spaniards from Manila visited Guangzhou in a vain effort to get official trading privileges, and soon they were developing active though illegal trade on the Guangdong and Fujian coasts....

Ems Telegram

Early in July, the candidacy of Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, a relative of the Prussian king, for the Spanish throne had alarmed the French, who feared that the extension of Prussian influence into Spain would threaten France. Leopold’s candidacy was withdrawn on July 12; the following day, the French ambassador to Prussia, Count Vincent Benedetti, approached King William at Ems...

France

...the final misjudgment born of overconfidence, provoked by his own ambitious miscalculations, and destined to ruin France. It is certainly true that the approaching end of the direct ruling line in Spain had interested European rulers for many years, and the Bourbon claim to a share in that rich inheritance—deriving from Louis’s marriage to Marie-Thérèse, elder daughter of...

Germany

...of Tirol with its vast mining resources. Ambitious marriage alliances spread Habsburg entitlements west and east: in 1496 Maximilian’s son Philip wed Joan, the daughter of the king and queen of Spain, thus linking Habsburg Austria to Spain and the Netherlands (the future Charles V was born of this union in 1500); and in 1516 Maximilian’s grandson Ferdinand was betrothed to the heiress of...

...title was transferred to Maximilian of Bavaria in 1623. In the Palatinate, too, the Counter-Reformation sought to bring Protestantism to an end. As the war spread into Hesse and Westphalia and as Spain resumed its attack on the Netherlands, Catholic forces seemed near triumph. This prospect, however, renewed the old fear, as in the time of Charles V, of Habsburg hegemony; an anti-Habsburg...

Matters were different on the empire’s western and southern fronts. The overriding political question in Europe in the second half of the 17th century was the future of Spain and its vast holdings in the southern Netherlands, Italy, and the Americas, because it was expected that the Spanish Habsburg line would die out with the feeble Charles II. Contenders for the Spanish inheritance were the...

Holland

...the Silent) was appointed stadtholder of Holland, Zeeland, and Utrecht by Philip II. Under William’s leadership Holland and Zeeland in 1572 became the centre of the revolt of the Netherlands against Spain. Holland, along with the six other northern Netherlands provinces, declared its independence from Spain in 1579, proclaiming the United Provinces of the Netherlands. The last vestiges of the...

Ireland

...conversation with O’Neill. Before Charles Blount, Lord Mountjoy, arrived in 1600 to replace Essex, the Irish leaders had gained the qualified support of Pope Clement VIII and of King Philip III of Spain. But Philip could afford to send only a minimal force to aid the Irish rebels. Its leader, Juan del Aguila, occupied Kinsale and was besieged (1601) by Mountjoy. O’Neill marched south to...

Japan

An aberrational but richly interesting thematic interlude involved the presence of Iberian merchants, diplomats, and missionaries. These Westerners were part of the vast exploration, trade, and colonization effort that reached South America, Africa, and South and Southeast Asia. From the time of the foreigners’ first arrival in 1543 until their expulsion in the 1630s, there was a modest amount...

...to govern the domestic scene, let alone control overseas trade. Further, Japanese marauders in association with Chinese pirates again became active. It was at this point in Japanese history that the Spanish and Portuguese made their appearance in the archipelago. In 1543 several Portuguese were shipwrecked on the island of Tanega, off southern Kyushu. These were the first Europeans to arrive in...

Mexico

...chaotic economic situation afforded Napoleon III the perfect opportunity to implement his scheme. The Juárez government had a huge foreign debt, and in 1861 it suspended all payments to Spain, Britain, and France. The three European powers prepared to send a punitive expedition to Mexico. The intervention was spearheaded by Spain, the forces of which landed at Veracruz on Dec. 14,...

Moroccan crises

In 1904 France had concluded a secret treaty with Spain partitioning Morocco and had also agreed not to oppose Britain’s moves in Egypt in exchange for a free hand in Morocco. Germany, however, insisted upon an open-door policy in the area; and, in a dramatic show of imperial power, the emperor William II visited Tangier and, from his yacht on March 31, 1905, declared for Morocco’s independence...

Netherlands

...fate of the Low Countries was already closely bound up with that of Austria by virtue of the Habsburg marriage; in 1504, this situation was intensified when Philip and his wife, Joan, inherited the Spanish crown. From then on, the Low Countries were merely a part of a greater whole, and their fate was principally decided by the struggle of this Spanish-Austrian empire for European hegemony....

The forcible measures taken by the central government against the “breaking of the images” were followed by a brief period of peace. The Duke of Alba (who became governor after the departure of Margaret of Parma on the last day of 1567) introduced stern measures at the express command of the king. These provoked a resistance to the government (often referred to as the...

...between the maritime powers and France for partition of the Spanish monarchy. In 1700, however, Louis XIV accepted the bequest of the Spanish throne for his grandson, Philippe d’Anjou (Philip V of Spain), and war was resumed the next year.

North Africa

...of Phoenician traders, mainly from Tyre and Sidon in modern Lebanon. The Phoenicians were looking not for land to settle but for anchorages and staging points on the trade route from Phoenicia to Spain, a source of silver and tin. Points on an alternative route by way of Sicily, Sardinia, and the Balearic Islands also were occupied. The Phoenicians lacked the manpower and the need to found...

...into a number of small Muslim principalities whose rulers were unable to hold out against Christian military advances. At the request of the Spanish Muslims, the Almoravids sent their army into Spain in 1086. By 1110, four years after Ibn Tāshufīn’s death, the Almoravids had become masters of the whole of Muslim Spain. The capital of their expanded empire was Marrakech, which...

...shifted from Spain to the Maghrib itself. The Portuguese occupied a number of positions on the Moroccan coast between 1471 and 1505, which included Tangier in the north and Agadir in the south. The Spaniards conquered Granada, the last Muslim stronghold on the peninsula, in 1492, and between 1505 and 1510 they began establishing garrison posts along the Maghribi coast. The most important of...

...in 1904, which settled a number of hostilities between the two countries—and the Cameroons had been ceded to Germany in 1911. Both acts together left France free to divide the country with Spain, which took over the Rif Mountains in the north and the border region with the Spanish Sahara in the south. Pacifying the Moroccan interior was achieved with a minimum of force by French Field...

Portugal

...the Great), the western county lost its autonomy. Sancho’s son Ferdinand I of Castile reconquered Coimbra in 1064 but entrusted it to a Mozarabic governor. When the African Almoravids annexed Muslim Spain, Alfonso VI, who ruled Castile and León (1072–1109), provided for the defense of the west by calling on Henry, brother of Duke Eudes (Odo) of Burgundy, whom he married to his...

After Philip II of Spain had occupied Portugal in 1580, the island of Terceira in the Azores held out for António of Crato, who himself sought alliances in England and France. In 1582 a French expedition to establish him in the Azores was defeated, and in 1589 an English attempt upon Lisbon, led by Sir Francis Drake and Sir John Norris, failed dismally. António died in Paris in...

settlements of Phoenicians

...corner of the island, became the principal colony of the Phoenicians in Cyprus. Elsewhere in the Mediterranean, several smaller settlements were planted as stepping-stones along the route to Spain and its mineral wealth in silver and copper: early remains at Malta go back to the 7th century
bce and at Sulcis and Nora in Sardinia and Motya in Sicily perhaps a century earlier. According...

Sicily

...ended in 1282 by a popular uprising called the Sicilian Vespers. Palermo then came under Aragonese rule. After 1412 the crown of Sicily was united with that of Aragon, and subsequently with that of Spain. Palermo declined during this long period of Spanish rule. In 1860 Giuseppe Garibaldi seized Palermo, which the following year joined the united kingdom of Italy. The city was severely bombed...

Spanish Marriages Affair

...and of her younger sister and heiress to the throne, Luisa Fernanda, to Antoine, duc de Montpensier, the youngest son of King Louis-Philippe of France. The marriages revived dynastic ties between Spain and France but caused the breakdown of friendly relations between England and France.

United Kingdom

...in 711, and the site was thereafter held as a fortress by all its successive occupiers. The Muslim occupation was permanently ended by the Spanish in 1462, and Isabella I annexed Gibraltar to Spain in 1501. But in 1704, during the War of the Spanish Succession, Sir George Rooke captured Gibraltar for the British, and Spain formally ceded it to Britain under the terms of the Treaty of...

Mary was executed on February 8, 1587. By then England had moved from cold war to open war against Spain. Philip II was the colossus of Europe and leader of resurgent Roman Catholicism. His kingdom was strong: Spanish troops were the best in Europe, Spain itself had been carved out of territory held by the infidel and still retained its Crusading zeal, and the wealth of the New World poured...

Yet the war began to turn in Britain’s favour in 1809, in large part because of Napoleon’s strategic mistakes. When the Spanish rebelled against French rule, substantial British armed forces were dispatched to assist them under the command of Arthur Wellesley, later duke of Wellington. Spain’s new anti-French posture meant that Spain was once again open to British manufactured goods, as were...

United States

...passed the Neutrality Act of 1935, embargoing shipment of arms to either aggressor or victim. Stronger legislation followed the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, in effect penalizing the Spanish government, whose fascist enemies were receiving strong support from Benito Mussolini and Adolph Hitler.

ships and shipping

...clinker ship of the north to the Mediterranean. This cross-fertilization took place in the 14th century, a time of considerable change in navigation in the Atlantic-facing regions of France, Spain, and Portugal.

...in the Baltic and northern Europe, carried most of Britain’s foreign seaborne trade. When the Hansa declined in power in the 16th century the Dutch, just then beginning to gain independence from Spain politically and from Portugal in trade, gained a major part of the English carrying trade. The Navigation Act initiated a rapid change in that pattern. After the restoration of the Stuart...

transatlantic slave trade

By the 1480s, Portuguese ships were already transporting Africans for use as slaves on the sugar plantations in the Cape Verde and Madeira islands in the eastern Atlantic. Spanish conquistadors took African slaves to the Caribbean after 1502, but Portuguese merchants continued to dominate the transatlantic slave trade for another century and a half, operating from their bases in the...